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The Boy on the Bus: A Novel
Meg Landry expected it to be a day like any other -- her asthmatic eight-year-old son would step off the bus, home from school. But on this day, the boy on the bus is not Meg's son -- or at least doesn't appear to be. This new boy shares Charlie's copper hair, tea-brown eyes, and slight frame. But there is something profoundly, if indefinably, different about him. He has a finer nose, his skin is shinier, and his face looks more mature, as if he has grown into being Charlie more than the real Charlie ever had. In the wake of Meg's quiet alarm, her far-flung family returns home, and a jangly unease sets in. Neither Charlie's father, Jeff, nor Charlie's rebellious teenage sister, Katie, can help Meg settle the question of the boy. They look to her for certainty -- after all, shouldn't a mother know her own child? In this daring novel, Deborah Schupack dissects a family stretched out along the seams of postmodern small-town life. With the precision of a literary wordsmith, Schupack has crafted an extraordinary tale of a mother's love for her son and a mystery that may ultimately rip them apart. Tense and atmospheric, this debut is a rare combination of intellectual sophistication and page-turning suspense.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
August 4, 2011
You know that feeling that you get at the end of an M Night Shymalan movie that asks all sorts of cool questions, has freaky plot twists, and seems like it's leading somewhere shocking, but ends with absolutely no answers to anything? That's what it's like to read this book. I feel like the author could have taken this concept, a stranger that looks exactly like your son but is a little...off, to so many interesting places. I thought of at least five (alien, android, Changeling-esque lying orphan, dissociative fugue in the boy, psychologically disturbed mom) that would have been satisfying, and Schupack didn't even come close to resolving anything. I still have no idea what was going on. The writing style was just ok.
Overall, if the author just wanted to paint a portrait of an estranged familiy, she didn't have to throw the mysterious son-that's-not-her-son element in there. She could have written the same novel around his asthma and nothing else. If you're going to raise a mystery, solve it in the end!
Overall, if the author just wanted to paint a portrait of an estranged familiy, she didn't have to throw the mysterious son-that's-not-her-son element in there. She could have written the same novel around his asthma and nothing else. If you're going to raise a mystery, solve it in the end!
September 13, 2010
Deborah Schupack's first effort, the novel The Boy on the Bus, is one of those painfully self-indulgent and pointless "artistic works" which plague the bookshelves from time to time. Beginning with an interesting premise -- a mother's creeping certainty that this boy on the afternoon school bus is a close approximation of, but is not truly, her son -- Schupack takes us on a 215 page slog through a quagmire of psychological pretension which ultimately, as Shakespeare put it, signifies nothing.
The book cover describes an intriguing scenario: A Vermont housewife finds that the last boy on the bus, the boy who hasn’t left the bus because he doesn’t seem to know that he’s arrived at his home, both is and somehow is not her son Charlie. He looks mostly right, sounds mostly right, but he is different; rather than being a severely asthmatic weakling, this boy seems more robust, even more mature. No one -- not the bus driver, the sheriff, the neighbors, the husband, the older daughter -- can tell if this is really Charlie. Each falls back upon the strange observation, “You’re his mother; you should know.”
This back-cover description is far more exciting than the book itself. Stewing in her analytical juices, dragging the reader through page after tedious page of perversely drawn analogy and pretentiously clever asides, author Schupack forgot the single most important aspect of telling a story: It needs to have a bloody point! Hints are dropped all over the place, each one capable of leading to a satisfying explanation and a powerful resolution to the facts in evidence; alas, Schupack seems not to have known what she wanted her book to be when it grew up.
This is the second problem with this work: It's about a hundred or more pages too long. If the story actually had a point and an ending, it could be quite reasonably condensed into an hour-long episode of The Outer Limits (meaning about 42 minutes of television screen time, these days). What I'm most reminded of is the cover of an issue of Writer's Digest (a magazine which, some 25 years ago, was worth reading and taking seriously), whereupon a sad-faced lady had "a short story, small, little cash worth," while her happy-faced twin had "a novel, big, worth a lot of money." There are times when the essence of a story simply cannot support more than about 20,000 words of expression.
If you enjoy precious authors such as Paul Auster or Richard Brautigan -- you know, the stuff whose fans look down your nose at you if you "just don't get it" -- then this book is for you. Enjoy the complete absence of plot, the rambling attempt at overly-intellectual self-importance through time-wasting obfuscation, and pat yourself on the back for "getting it."
Conversely, if you want a good story, look elsewhere. For the "things are not what they seem" genre, try Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon, Dean Koontz's False Memory, or classics like Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. For explorations into the alienation of the modern family, no one has yet topped Judith Guest’s Ordinary People. And for a rollicking good tale of children, spend a little time with relative newcomer M. Bradley Davis, whose The Hand in the Mirror: Mindfusion Book 1 will provide an abundance of thought-provoking ideas set amid the vast and fertile genre of science fiction.
I hope that, should Ms. Schupack have another offering in the wings, she ensures that it is a whole boy, on the right bus, and that both actually go somewhere.
The book cover describes an intriguing scenario: A Vermont housewife finds that the last boy on the bus, the boy who hasn’t left the bus because he doesn’t seem to know that he’s arrived at his home, both is and somehow is not her son Charlie. He looks mostly right, sounds mostly right, but he is different; rather than being a severely asthmatic weakling, this boy seems more robust, even more mature. No one -- not the bus driver, the sheriff, the neighbors, the husband, the older daughter -- can tell if this is really Charlie. Each falls back upon the strange observation, “You’re his mother; you should know.”
This back-cover description is far more exciting than the book itself. Stewing in her analytical juices, dragging the reader through page after tedious page of perversely drawn analogy and pretentiously clever asides, author Schupack forgot the single most important aspect of telling a story: It needs to have a bloody point! Hints are dropped all over the place, each one capable of leading to a satisfying explanation and a powerful resolution to the facts in evidence; alas, Schupack seems not to have known what she wanted her book to be when it grew up.
This is the second problem with this work: It's about a hundred or more pages too long. If the story actually had a point and an ending, it could be quite reasonably condensed into an hour-long episode of The Outer Limits (meaning about 42 minutes of television screen time, these days). What I'm most reminded of is the cover of an issue of Writer's Digest (a magazine which, some 25 years ago, was worth reading and taking seriously), whereupon a sad-faced lady had "a short story, small, little cash worth," while her happy-faced twin had "a novel, big, worth a lot of money." There are times when the essence of a story simply cannot support more than about 20,000 words of expression.
If you enjoy precious authors such as Paul Auster or Richard Brautigan -- you know, the stuff whose fans look down your nose at you if you "just don't get it" -- then this book is for you. Enjoy the complete absence of plot, the rambling attempt at overly-intellectual self-importance through time-wasting obfuscation, and pat yourself on the back for "getting it."
Conversely, if you want a good story, look elsewhere. For the "things are not what they seem" genre, try Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon, Dean Koontz's False Memory, or classics like Ira Levin's The Stepford Wives. For explorations into the alienation of the modern family, no one has yet topped Judith Guest’s Ordinary People. And for a rollicking good tale of children, spend a little time with relative newcomer M. Bradley Davis, whose The Hand in the Mirror: Mindfusion Book 1 will provide an abundance of thought-provoking ideas set amid the vast and fertile genre of science fiction.
I hope that, should Ms. Schupack have another offering in the wings, she ensures that it is a whole boy, on the right bus, and that both actually go somewhere.
June 25, 2008
The premise of this book is interesting - a boy gets off the bus, and his mother believes that it isn't him. Neat! But then it becomes a very tedious exploration of the mother's very tedious life. Whoopee, she's having a midlife crisis that is exacerbated by a distant partner and bratty teenage daughter. I spent most of the book wishing she'd get a hobby or a job or a red sports car.
I'm sure there are lots of metaphors and whatnot buried in this book, but the drudgery of this upper-middle-class mother's life left me not caring about any deeper meaning.
I was so excited by the premise, but this book was really dreary.
I'm sure there are lots of metaphors and whatnot buried in this book, but the drudgery of this upper-middle-class mother's life left me not caring about any deeper meaning.
I was so excited by the premise, but this book was really dreary.
January 15, 2011
The book jacket blurb was way more intriguing than the actual book.
February 2, 2011
Meg Landry is an unreliable narrator. She’s the central character of Deborah Schupack’s novel, The Boy on the Bus. Meg lives in rural Vermont with her asthmatic son, Charlie, and her partner, Jeff (who is mostly away working as an architect) and her 13 year old daughter, Katie, who attends boarding school.
As the novel opens, Meg is waiting for Charlie’s school bus (and Charlie’s school bus driver, Sandy, for whom Meg has ‘feelings’). But when the school bus arrives, Charlie won’t get off the bus and when Meg goes to get him she discovers that this boy is not, in fact, her son.
“Meg sat in the row in front of him, facing forward. He seemed to be a good boy – whoever he was - and eager to please.”
It is from this intriguing start that we learn the story of this family as seen through Meg’s eyes. And I would advise reading this book in as close to one sitting as you can manage because the affect of Meg’s estrangement from her partner, her ongoing battles with Katie and the emotional toll of caring for Charlie’s illness has a cumulative effect that I’m not sure would be apparent if you read the book in fits and starts.
It is only when we see Meg through the eyes of others (the town sherriff, Charlie’s doctor) that we begin to understand what is actually happening and while some reader’s might find Meg unsympathetic - I felt quite sorry for her and hopeful at the book’s end.
As the novel opens, Meg is waiting for Charlie’s school bus (and Charlie’s school bus driver, Sandy, for whom Meg has ‘feelings’). But when the school bus arrives, Charlie won’t get off the bus and when Meg goes to get him she discovers that this boy is not, in fact, her son.
“Meg sat in the row in front of him, facing forward. He seemed to be a good boy – whoever he was - and eager to please.”
It is from this intriguing start that we learn the story of this family as seen through Meg’s eyes. And I would advise reading this book in as close to one sitting as you can manage because the affect of Meg’s estrangement from her partner, her ongoing battles with Katie and the emotional toll of caring for Charlie’s illness has a cumulative effect that I’m not sure would be apparent if you read the book in fits and starts.
It is only when we see Meg through the eyes of others (the town sherriff, Charlie’s doctor) that we begin to understand what is actually happening and while some reader’s might find Meg unsympathetic - I felt quite sorry for her and hopeful at the book’s end.
March 9, 2012
This book left me so perplexed and really wondering where my time went.
The course of the book seems to take place in the span of 2 days, with a little extra thrown on. I couldn't figure out if the boy was truly different or if the mom was suffering from some kind of mental illness (or at least self illness).
I never connected with the characters, never felt an affinity for anyone. I think I connected more with the goose than anything, kind of wishing I could fly away. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I have to be a parent myself to truly understand the whole premise of this book. Or, maybe, it was just one of those books you read and wonder why you took the time to do so.
Schupack's a good writer, she's able to put a lot of detail into her words to give you a sense of location, a description of surrounding. But, she never really gets to the point (in my mind). You're just left wondering what in the world happened, why it happened, what's going to happen next, what the whole thing was about. Is he or isn't he? We'll never know.
The course of the book seems to take place in the span of 2 days, with a little extra thrown on. I couldn't figure out if the boy was truly different or if the mom was suffering from some kind of mental illness (or at least self illness).
I never connected with the characters, never felt an affinity for anyone. I think I connected more with the goose than anything, kind of wishing I could fly away. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I have to be a parent myself to truly understand the whole premise of this book. Or, maybe, it was just one of those books you read and wonder why you took the time to do so.
Schupack's a good writer, she's able to put a lot of detail into her words to give you a sense of location, a description of surrounding. But, she never really gets to the point (in my mind). You're just left wondering what in the world happened, why it happened, what's going to happen next, what the whole thing was about. Is he or isn't he? We'll never know.
October 23, 2008
Well, this was weird.
The bus comes to their house but Charlie doesn't get off. The mother gets on the bus to see why. She sees a boys that looks a lot like her son but is not her son. She doesn't say this out loud but remains on the bus with the boy for hours.
The sheriff comes and gets both the mother and son (boy) off the bus and has the father called who happens to be working in Canada.
The father comes home and isn't sure about the boy either. But he has been gone for months. They get the older sister who is going to boarding school and she is no help.
It's a very estranged family.
The bus comes to their house but Charlie doesn't get off. The mother gets on the bus to see why. She sees a boys that looks a lot like her son but is not her son. She doesn't say this out loud but remains on the bus with the boy for hours.
The sheriff comes and gets both the mother and son (boy) off the bus and has the father called who happens to be working in Canada.
The father comes home and isn't sure about the boy either. But he has been gone for months. They get the older sister who is going to boarding school and she is no help.
It's a very estranged family.
March 21, 2009
Yes, it may appear to be a waste of time. The end reveals no wrap to the mystery... or does it?
The answer is probably found, not so absolute, in the journey.
All professional reviews I've read make this novel out to be something much more magical than it was for me. The concept, if it is indeed to discover oneself and to recognize those you love must be 're-discovered' all the time, isn't a new one. In my opinion, 'the mystery' at hand was only used to coax us in, to reiterate an already taught lesson.
Poetic: so at times beautiful, lyrical, but also somewhat confusing and ambiguous.
I'm not bitter... just apathetic.
The answer is probably found, not so absolute, in the journey.
All professional reviews I've read make this novel out to be something much more magical than it was for me. The concept, if it is indeed to discover oneself and to recognize those you love must be 're-discovered' all the time, isn't a new one. In my opinion, 'the mystery' at hand was only used to coax us in, to reiterate an already taught lesson.
Poetic: so at times beautiful, lyrical, but also somewhat confusing and ambiguous.
I'm not bitter... just apathetic.
January 24, 2026
Couldn’t make it past page 8. Felt like reading a middle schooler’s homework… but not as fun
November 9, 2009
Meg is physically and mentally exhausted. She's a stay-at-home mom to 8 year old Charlie with chronic asthma. One day she goes to meet his school bus and he's not on it. Instead, there's a slightly different red-headed kid, a bit bigger than Charlie, and wearing an argyle sweater she doesn't recognize. It takes her so long to decide what to do, the sheriff is called in, who then notifies Charlie's father who has been away on business for months. When Jeff returns home he fetches teenage angsty daughter Katie back from boarding school, and the stilted family reunion is witness to Meg's breakdown in slow motion. The premise is smart; it's brilliant how the reader can feel the tension in the relationships, and how caring for an ill child for so long can wreak havoc. I like how with each chapter I changed my mind, whether Charlie is himself or a different boy, whether Meg has lost her mind or is on the verge of doing so, and what might happen to everybody going forward.
July 14, 2011
I did not enjoy reading this book about a family unraveling, it seems, because they cannot deal with their young son's asthma--the father and daughter become unavailable physically and the mother, though present physically, becomes unavailable emotionally. The author has an impressive command of the language (which is what kept me reading), but the whole thing was utterly depressing. (I have a headache as I type.) If anyone needs to write a critical literary analysis using the psychological approach, this is the book for you!
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November 11, 2009Amazing story of fantasy---what would you do if you were in the situation this mother was in finding a child not her own on the school bus in place of her son. A great read with the author leading the reader to come to their own conclusions about what was happening...was the mother going mad....was the child sickly....was living alone with her family driving this mother to live in a fantasy world?
September 5, 2018
I think at the end - what was this all about? I get the themes and the main theme, but it is difficult to read because most of the characters are not fleshed out enough to really come to life. Not believable because I couldn't relate to any character and it took a long time to figure out exactly what was supposed to be going on.
September 21, 2009
Casey...i didn't get it!!! hurry up and read it so we can discuss!!! ARG
January 19, 2021
The story begins with a woman whose asthmatic 8 year old son won't get off the school bus at their house. So she gets on the bus. The bus driver says her son won't get off. She says the boy isn't her son. The police are called. The boys often absent father is called home from Canada.
The book synopsis says "With the precision of a literary wordsmith, Shupack (the author) has crafted an extraordinary tale of a mother's love for her son and a mystery that may ultimately rip them apart."
I say "Poppycock". This is a dreadful book, with a main character (the mother Meg) - who is completely unlikeable and most likely mentally ill.
At the end of the last chapter - nothing is resolved, we still don't know if the child on the bus is her child or if her child died because she left him unattended and she has lost her mind.
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! It sucks
The book synopsis says "With the precision of a literary wordsmith, Shupack (the author) has crafted an extraordinary tale of a mother's love for her son and a mystery that may ultimately rip them apart."
I say "Poppycock". This is a dreadful book, with a main character (the mother Meg) - who is completely unlikeable and most likely mentally ill.
At the end of the last chapter - nothing is resolved, we still don't know if the child on the bus is her child or if her child died because she left him unattended and she has lost her mind.
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! It sucks
January 17, 2024
This book for me captures, crystallizes in my permanent memory, that moment in time when one realizes our children are their own people, not always who we may think them to be. It gracefully looks at family life with all its complexities, especially through the years of adolescence. The words and images leave a vivid and at times poetic impression. Books don’t always have to be tied up in a neat little bow but why I read them is to gain a new insight, to appreciate some otherwise unarticulated feeling or concept. Like when I watch many a French film, it’s for the experience provided, seeing another perspective. Schupack did not disappoint! Well done!
May 21, 2021
Intriguing premise- Mom is convinced that they boy who came home on the school bus is not her Charlie. He looks a lot like Charlie, but there are subtle differences- he is more robust, has a healthier appetite, a slightly older looking face. Estranged dad heads home from Canada, older sister from boarding school, puzzling it out. Is is Charlie? Or is Mom feeling guilty over her exhaustion coping alone with his severe asthma and her need to get away from him?
June 26, 2017
I have mixed feelings on this book. It was unique and mysterious and held my interest. In the end, nothing ever gets explained... which was initially frustrating and disappointing, but part of me is okay with that as the weirdness of the book stuck with me for days after finishing. I don't know - I guess it was unsettling but I'm kind of okay with that (?)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 12, 2019
Starts off as a promising thriller with an albeit played-out trope. I think it has a lot of potential but never quite makes it there, maybe if it were a little longer it might have reached it but overall I think it fails in it's ultimate goal. The premise is interesting and the themes surrounding motherhood and family are interesting as well but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.
May 16, 2024
Really striking out on these library books lately. Either I'm missing the symbolism or this book truly had little to no point. Is Charlie Charlie? Is Charlie an imposter? Is Charlie a goose? Wtf is going on. What a perplexing mix of random character tidbits that literally never connected (IMO). Oh well!
June 7, 2020
Read this years ago, and remembered enjoying it well enough, but was reminded of it again after reading an article on Capgras syndrome, which describes the delusions that your loved ones have been abducted and replaced by identical imposters.
July 24, 2020
When goodreads wanted to know if there were spoilers in my review, I actually laughed. I’m almost positive that there needs to be a plot, or something to happen for me to spoil. I spend approximately 200 pages saying to myself, I skipped a page right, and then going back to make sure I didn’t.
April 30, 2026
This is a book which is a mystery--the genre, that is. It wants to be contemporary fiction, it wants to be a mystery, it wants to be sci-fi--but none of those are achieved. It's just a book with no plot and no ending. Not recommended for anyone!
January 9, 2020
Huhn?
September 25, 2007
The boy that Meg put on the school bus this Vermont morning was her asthmatic 8-year-old son, Charlie. The boy who comes home in the afternoon is not. Sure, he almost looks like Charlie, almost acts like Charlie, almost knows the things Charlie should know, but not quite. As Meg sits on the bus studying this boy, the bus driver, Sandy, tells her, "We looked back out the window and there you were, reappearing at the front door when you had been standing there only a second ago." The sheriff arrives, with questions. Meg's partner, Jeff, is summoned from his job in Toronto. Meg's daughter, Katie, a 13-year-old very full of herself, is retrieved from boarding school. The boy is taken to Charlie's doctor for tests, where it's discovered he no longer has asthma. He's taller, stronger, more adventurous. Everyone asks the same question: Is this Charlie? And no one knows.
Because the book jacket made the mistake of calling THE BOY ON THE BUS a mystery, I expected a different sort of ending and was disappointed by the lack of resolution. Had Schupack used Meg's identity crisis to resolve the questions, I would have been satisfied, but as it was I enjoyed every moment up until the last several pages, then felt cheated. Still, this little novel is an excellent psychological portrait of a family in limbo. All of the characters except Charlie are well drawn (Charlie comes across as shadowy at best, but perhaps that's intended), the prose is beautiful and descriptive, the dialogue realistic, and the resulting impression very surreal. Although at times I had trouble with the plot -- if my kid came home in Charlie's condition I'd be screaming for conclusive evidence -- I also appreciated the fact that Schupack didn't turn this story into a thriller but instead kept the search very much inside the family's heads. Even as Meg no longer knows her own son, she finds herself a stranger to her partner and daughter as well. And even herself.
Although certainly not a mystery as claimed, THE BOY ON THE BUS is a clever and expertly crafted search for identity and can be appreciated as such.
Because the book jacket made the mistake of calling THE BOY ON THE BUS a mystery, I expected a different sort of ending and was disappointed by the lack of resolution. Had Schupack used Meg's identity crisis to resolve the questions, I would have been satisfied, but as it was I enjoyed every moment up until the last several pages, then felt cheated. Still, this little novel is an excellent psychological portrait of a family in limbo. All of the characters except Charlie are well drawn (Charlie comes across as shadowy at best, but perhaps that's intended), the prose is beautiful and descriptive, the dialogue realistic, and the resulting impression very surreal. Although at times I had trouble with the plot -- if my kid came home in Charlie's condition I'd be screaming for conclusive evidence -- I also appreciated the fact that Schupack didn't turn this story into a thriller but instead kept the search very much inside the family's heads. Even as Meg no longer knows her own son, she finds herself a stranger to her partner and daughter as well. And even herself.
Although certainly not a mystery as claimed, THE BOY ON THE BUS is a clever and expertly crafted search for identity and can be appreciated as such.
January 13, 2009
One afternoon, Vermont housewife Meg discovers that the boy on the school bus outside her door is almost, but not quite, her eight-year-old son, Charlie. It's a typical X-Filesscenario, but in the hands of first-time novelist Schupack it becomes an acute psychological study of alienated ex-urban family life. Meg's panic recalls her aloof, restless husband from his job in Canada and her bratty, rebellious teenage daughter from boarding school, but neither they nor the local sheriff nor the family doctor can verify Charlie's authenticity. Unlike the old, asthmatic Charlie, who was both an emotional anchor and a ball-and-chain to Meg, the new Charlie is more mature, robust and adventurous, threatening to follow his father and sister out of the house, untether Meg from her caretaker role and force her to confront her own thwarted ambitions. Schupack writes in a restrained, naturalistic style. Her characters are sharply observed, and she has an ear for familial bickering and the idioms of male withdrawal and teen exasperation ("What's so wrong with the little creep now?"). The central figure of Charlie is not as well realized; he is less a character than a symbol of familial estrangement and a projection of Meg's dread of the confines of marriage and motherhood. As a plot engine, the mystery of Charlie's identity sometimes feels forced (can't someone run a DNA test on this kid?), but the predicament allows Schupack to draw a subtle and chilling portrait of that much scrutinized figure, the postfeminist wife.
I didn't get this story at all. It seems the kid is different but not. I can't even say how it ends. He approaches his mother with the fact that this is what she wanted... a healthy, self-sustaining individual.
I didn't get this story at all. It seems the kid is different but not. I can't even say how it ends. He approaches his mother with the fact that this is what she wanted... a healthy, self-sustaining individual.
October 16, 2010
This book starts out so strong, it completely grabbed me from the first page. A mother is waiting for her son to get off the school bus, sees the bus driver walking toward the house, races outside to see what's wrong, and finds that whoever the kid on the bus is, and however much he looks like her son, it is not her son. But then it goes nowhere.
She keeps thinking back to the night before, when he had a coughing fit (he's severely asthmatic) so extreme that he pushed the "panic" button next to his bed. It's slowly revealed that she first started to leave the house, waited at the front door til he became silent, went into his room and pushed the "cancel" button, then left the house til morning. She doesn't know whether he grew silent because he fell asleep or something worse.
I kept waiting for some sort of revelation or resolution, but there isn't any of either. It just ends with all the same questions (Who is this boy on the bus? What happened to Charlie?) and no answers. Big disappointment.
Still, I thought it was really well written and I enjoyed the author's almost stream-of-counsciousness style, so I'm giving it 2 stars.
She keeps thinking back to the night before, when he had a coughing fit (he's severely asthmatic) so extreme that he pushed the "panic" button next to his bed. It's slowly revealed that she first started to leave the house, waited at the front door til he became silent, went into his room and pushed the "cancel" button, then left the house til morning. She doesn't know whether he grew silent because he fell asleep or something worse.
I kept waiting for some sort of revelation or resolution, but there isn't any of either. It just ends with all the same questions (Who is this boy on the bus? What happened to Charlie?) and no answers. Big disappointment.
Still, I thought it was really well written and I enjoyed the author's almost stream-of-counsciousness style, so I'm giving it 2 stars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 26, 2013
I was disturbed by this book and disliked the lack of an ending. It was disturbing, the concept of one's child going missing and another 8 year old (or perhaps slightly older) child replacing him. All the questions about his family recognizing him or not. The mother perhaps suffering from mental illness, unable to recognize her child and convinced he is not her child was distasteful to me. The woman seemed obsessive in the reflections on parenting her asthmatic child. She sounded overprotective and perhaps for whatever mental illness needs are at play had an entirely different image of her son in her mind than he actually was. My interpretation of the novel was the mother was suffering from mental illness, Charlie was in no way as weak and ill as she saw him to be. The moment Charlie doesn't get off the bus, Meg begins to have the beginning of a more accurate awareness of the boy. The conflict within her -- her need for him to be ill and overwhelmingly dependent on her versus the sudden awareness of his sound health -- appears to be the basis of the story's intent. Too much vagueness and wished I felt more empathy for Meg.
June 18, 2012
I didn't really care much for this book at all. The premise captured my interest - that of a woman who failed to recognize her own son getting off the school bus - but ultimately, the plot failed to maintain my curiosity. Perhaps its only saving grace was its length - it was a very short novel - more of a novella than a novel, really. The narrator's flights of fancy became dull and rather cliche after the first fifty pages. The stylized writing was solid, but the lack of real characters and an actual, moving plot detracted from its strength. The resolution was hardly satisfying - but really, the most frustrating thing was the lack of believable characters. There wasn't enough credibility created for some of the actions that took place. In the end, the only reason why I even bothered to finish it was because of its short page count.
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